Wednesday, May 27, 2015

SELCO: Day 1

Today we had our first day interacting with SELCO India, a company that works on solar light solutions. We broke up into groups and discussed potential solutions to crucial problems and barriers facing the community. Today we had our first day interacting with SELCO India, a company that works on solar light solutions.

We began with a role-playing activity in which the SELCO employees answered questions as if they were residents in an impoverished migrant community living in tents. We asked about their day-to-day lives and tried to glean the main problems or barriers they faced. The importance and process of engaging a community was discussed, as well as strategies for effective communication.

We broke up into groups and each formulated a problem statement based on the most crucial perceived needs of the community.

Next, SELCO helped walk us through the brainstorming process known as ideation. In a flurry of Post-it Notes, we posed, discussed, and organized potential solutions to our problem and began to narrow the focus.

The "human-centric" design approach employed by SELCO keeps the customers at the forefront of every consideration. What good is a technological solution if it overlooks a behavioral aspect that may inhibit its usefulness?

Tomorrow we will get a chance to go out into three communities and directly interact with these potential customers to begin to flesh out the potential solutions we have come up with.